


Monsters

by orphan_account



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Anal Sex, F/M, Knotting, Mating Cycles/In Heat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-15 00:41:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1284823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not all monsters hide under the bed. Some of them hide inside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompter on the kink meme who wanted reluctant alpha Natasha. Hope this fits the bill :)
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: Implied past rape.

Natasha’s hands are shaking and she stares down at them, uncomprehending. 

“Natasha are you alright?” Bruce’s voice is soft with an undercurrent of concern he shouldn’t be able to muster in his state and Natasha has to close her eyes for a moment to gather the composure to speak.

“Yes,” she answers through the door, bowing her head to rest against the cool glass of the bathroom mirror. “I’ll be right out.”

She doesn’t dare look at herself, knowing all too well what she’ll see. A monster with ravenous eyes, hunched over and waiting to devour. Clenching her hands on the bathroom sink cracks the marble and she breathes slow and steady to calm her racing, hungry heart. Another spasm moves through her, urging her to move, to restrain, to _claim_ and she has to tense her jaw against a possessive animal snarl. 

God she hates this. 

Bruce has fallen silent again and in her mind’s eye she can see him, quietly desperate and waiting on the bed. Waiting for her. 

Natasha takes a deep breath and raises her head, avoiding her reflection. She tracks her own silent footsteps towards the door and rests her hand on the knob. Hesitating too long, she grits her teeth, silently reprimanding. _This is what you were made for Natasha_ , she reminds herself harshly. 

Then with a strengthening breath she opens the bathroom door and steps out into the mid-afternoon light of the bedroom.

Bruce is waiting where she thought he would be, calmly folded down onto his knees with his legs tucked under him already on the bed. He has his eyes closed, perfectly composed, but his nostrils flare when she enters the room and when he opens his eyes they’re glassy with fever. Bruce blinks slowly at her and gives her a slightly strained smile. 

“You’re alright?” he asks, remarkably still capable of rational human thought. It makes Natasha want to hold him down by the neck and growl in his face, bite him till he bleeds, fuck him till he screams her name. 

Natasha nods once, stiffly, and begins to undress. She can feel Bruce watching her as she carefully unzips her catsuit and peels it off of her body. Stepping out of the crumpled material, Natasha flicks it off to the side with her foot, left standing in nothing but her jockstrap before him. 

Bruce looks at the straining hardness inside her underwear and licks his lips, spreading his knees wider unconsciously. Lust wells up in Natasha at the sight and a red fog begins to descend over her vision, urging her to give herself over to her instincts. A snarl builds in her throat and she stalks forward, quick and quiet until she’s standing at the foot of the bed.

She gets two fingers under Bruce’s chin and raises his eyes to her face. Their eyes meet and hold, and Natasha can barely find the will to hold herself back from slamming him face first into the mattress when she sees the naked want in his eyes, smells the honey and cinnamon decadence of his scent rising up to curl around them both. Finally Natasha can’t hold herself back any longer and her hand strokes down from his chin to his bared neck to grip, digging her nails in slight enough to bite. 

Bruce shudders and his eyes flutter closed, delicate as anything. Natasha closes her eyes as well and breathes deeply to reign in the animal part of her that’s snapping it’s jaws and howling inside her mind. When she opens them again Bruce is watching her with remarkably sharper eyes.

“Natasha what’s wrong?” he asks and when he speaks she can feel the muscles in his throat undulate, his pulse fluttering like a baby-bird under her palm. It makes her feel powerful. It makes her feel wretched.

“Nothing,” she says and gives in, slamming him back onto the mattress so hard the bed thumps against the wall.

Bruce goes with a cut-off gasp and his eyes cloud immediately when she presses her caged length against his own smaller one, rutting viciously through her covering. Pinning his knees to the bed with her own, Natasha holds him open so she can see everything. _God he’s beautiful like this_ , she thinks. Perfectly pink and liberally slick he’s every alpha’s wet dream and Natasha is so hard now it’s painful. With a growl she rips off her jockstrap and rubs herself through the slick at the crease of his thigh. Bruce’s eyes roll back in his head and he arches on a gasp that turns into a cry as her fingers find his little hole and slip inside. 

It’s wet inside and buried deep like this she can feel his pulse pound in a lewd beat against her fingers. The restraining hand at his throat clenches tighter as she thrusts her fingers inside him and Bruce thrashes, completely submerged in the throes of heat now. Natasha feels her own rut rise up to meet him and she only has a little time to panic before she’s slipped her hand out of him, thrust her cock in and the world descends into a haze of blood-red feral desire.

When she comes to again Natasha is curled on her side with Bruce’s head tucked into her neck, still locked deep inside him. She tests the strength of her knot and finds it secure enough that Bruce hisses in his sleep. Natasha stops moving immediately and looks down at him. Still fast asleep, Bruce looks more peaceful that she’s ever seen him. 

_It’s a wonder he doesn’t indulge his heats more often_ , she thinks, then curses herself for it. 

It would be tantamount to insanity for an Omega to try and get through their heat alone and it’s not like there are Alpha’s lined up around the block for the chance to sleep with the host of the Hulk. Even after all he’s done for the city, for the world, Bruce is still feared more often than he is praised and It’s a rare person who approaches the scientist without fear in their eyes. Not exactly a conducive environment for finding a willing heat-mate, she realises with a flash of sadness, a hint of frustration: at people, at the world. 

Natasha runs a hand down Bruce’s spine and finds where they’re connected, checking for damage and feeling relieved when she finds none. 

Bruce’s face is calm in sleep, slack and completely trusting and guilt suffuses Natasha when she realises that if not for her own selfishness she could have been helping him through his heats all this time. Natasha kisses Bruce’s ear in vague apology and in doing so notes the vivid, hand-shaped bruise marks on his hips. The sight makes her freeze and for one heart stopping moment she is caught up in remembered shame from another life. The moment passes quickly though and when she draws back slightly she can see the vicious bite and claw marks that litter his tanned torso. One particularly large bite sunk down into the meat of his shoulder is still bleeding and at the sight of it self-loathing rushes through Natasha so intense that it makes her bite her tongue; anything to stop the tortured noise that wants to escape, the frustrated scream that’s building in her throat. 

Natasha breathes slowly and screws her eyes shut.

Red in her ledger. Red clouding her eyes. Red on their bodies. Red, red, red, everywhere she looks-- everything she is. Splashed across every page of her history book. The damnable bane of every moment of her life: this ferocity, this strength, this savage wanting that consumes everything in its path. 

She hates it. She hates herself for it. 

Bruce is looking up at her when she opens her eyes, his brown gaze sleepy and sated. He kisses her collarbone and gifts her with a warm smile that makes her heart clench for how little she deserves it. A hand reaches out, ghost-like, to touch his flushed cheek and it takes Natasha off-guard to feel soft skin under her fingers. She watches her own fingers caress the skin, catching his pleased sigh in her palm. 

Bruce’s hand reaches up to tug gently at her hair. “Hey,” he says, hoarse and lazily sated.

“Hey,” she parrots, much less relaxed and he frowns at her, drowsy and confused with the vestiges of heat.

“You don’t sound like yourself.”

Natasha quirks a small smile, amused that Bruce of all people thinks he knows her. “If you say so.”

Her cock softens enough to slip out and Bruce makes a sleepy sound and rolls away a bit to stretch. He smells amazing and natural sensuality has his body twisting and coiling in a way that is impossibly alluring. Heat still clings to him, but the urge to mate is sated for the moment in both of them. 

Bruce looks up at her, sloe-eyed and contemplative. Natasha looks back and feels laid bare by the intensity of his gaze. The moment passes though and Bruce smiles at her guilelessly and rolls over to rest his chin on her stomach, slotting between her legs easy as anything.

“Thank you for taking care of me,” he murmurs. The sincerity in his voice is almost too much, but she manages a nod. 

Bruce nuzzles at her stomach above where her soft cock rests and drags his lips below her bellybutton, making her squirm. Bruce laughs into her skin, a warm, pleased sound and kisses the wet head of her cock. It’s suddenly too much and Natasha jerks away abruptly, rolling out from under him and onto her back to stare up at the vaulted ceiling. 

Bruce blinks after her and a frown comes to his face. “Okay, now I know something’s wrong.”

 _Just leave it alone Bruce_ , she thinks and closes her eyes.

There’s a moment of silence.

“Is it… Is it me?” he asks so softly she almost doesn’t hear it. 

“No.”

Bruce doesn’t touch her again, but he draws close enough that she can feel him as a solid brand of heat at her side. She’s tense for a long time, but his presence is steady and eventually comforting. It helps her relax enough to start her deep breathing exercises, drawing deep breaths into her stomach and letting them out again slow and easy. She doesn’t realise she’s matching his pace until he mutters a soothing “good” on an exhale and she opens her eyes again automatically.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.

She can almost see him smiling at her. “Don’t be.”

“It’s not you,” she assures him.

Bruce sighs and after a moment of hesitation she turns on her side so they’re lying face to face. Bruce’s face fills up her vision, wary and vaguely unsure and Natasha silently curses herself for putting that look there. 

“It’s not,” she repeats firmly, earnest enough to have him looking at her with those dark, probing eyes that see far too much for comfort. It only lasts a moment before Bruce smiles at her like he believes her and Natasha breathes a sigh of relief she didn’t even know she was holding back. 

Bruce hums thoughtfully to himself. “What I’m interested to know is what it _actually_ is.”

“Nothing important,” she answers.

“Why don’t I believe that?” Bruce says softly and Natasha almost flinches at the open compassion in his voice. Something in her must respond to him though because she finds herself consumed by old memories.

Natasha stays quiet for a long time—too long really-- but Bruce waits for her to be ready, patient as anything.

“I don’t do this often,” she says slowly. “Or at all,” she amends.

Bruce blinks and says, “This being sex?”

“Sex with omegas.”

Bruce seems to take this in. “I assume there’s a good reason for that,” he says.

“There is,” she says and for some reason finds herself wanting to explain this to him. This thing she hasn’t told a soul about in twenty years. “It’s a bit of a long story.”

Bruce smiles at her. “I have time.”

Natasha smiles back, tentative, and takes a deep breath to begin.

She tells him everything. It just falls out of her like it was waiting for acknowledgement, that hidden place inside of her full of pain and regret. It’s cathartic in a way, like confession-- if confession was two people in bed, one listening patiently, the other spilling sins between them. The story is long and sad, wrapped up in her dark early history, bathed in red, red, red. 

The girl had been her roommate in her second three years at the Facility. They were together a lot, paired up for training exercises and team ops because they worked well together. They were Black Widow and Slip Shadow and they were the best operatives the Red Room ever produced. Until Slip Shadow’s first heat. The Facility had a system for weeding out omegas, but Slip Shadow had been a rare case, an omega that presented like a beta until first heat. She was an anomaly and none of them were prepared when she went into heat and Natasha’s rut rose up and wiped her mind away in a haze of red. Slip Shadow had been in the infirmary for a month afterwards and even with all her training, all the mental conditioning the Facility had drilled into her she had been too damaged by the experience to return to the program. 

Natasha had never even known her real name. 

When she’s done Bruce’s hands come up to cup her jaw, thumbs brushing across her cheeks to wipe away the dampness there. She watches his hands withdraw with numb fascination. “I…” she says and lets it trail off.

“It’s okay,” Bruce says, miraculously pulling a tissue from somewhere and using it to blot her face. “It’s okay Natasha.”

“It’s really not,” she says, choked, because even in their world of legitimised murder, rape is never okay. 

Bruce pulls her into a tight embrace and lets her bury her head in his shoulder. “It’s not your fault,” he amends.

“Then whose fault is it?” she asks numbly.

“No ones,” he says evenly. “No one could have predicted what happened, least of all you. You had no idea what you were walking into. First heats come on fast with nearly no warning. I’m a biologist, I know these things,” Bruce says.

“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“No,” he sighs. “I didn’t think it would. Guilt like this doesn’t go away overnight.”

“Is that another clinical observation?”

“Try real-life experience.”

Natasha thinks of the Hulk and all the people he must have killed consumed by his rage. She closes her eyes to collect herself.

“Does it ever go away?” She asks, too quiet, but he hears her anyway.

“No, but it gets better. You feel it less often as time goes on, but you never stop feeling it,” Bruce says and there’s a wealth of knowledge in his voice, an uncomfortable reminder of exactly how much guilt Bruce carries with him every day.

“Sometimes I think I’ll never be able to stop hating myself for what I am,” Natasha whispers—her most personal secret-- and Bruce strokes fingers through her hair.

“What’s that?”

“An animal. A monster.”

“Yeah,” Bruce says, a lifetimes worth of weariness in his voice. They share a look of complete understanding: one monster to another. “Yeah I know.”

“But it gets better,” she says, repeating his words because some desperate part of her needs that assurance, needs to know that even if she never forgets the sight of Slip Shadow broken and used at least she has this.

“It gets better,” he confirms and presses a soothing kiss to her forehead.

Natasha stays curled up like that for a long time, until heat rises within Bruce and rut shrouds her vision with red, her monster rising up once more.


End file.
